TimeShift Eyes-on

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Sierra rebuilt this FPS. They had the technology.

By Greg Miller

Last year, Sierra showcased TimeShift at a company event and said the title would blow the doors off of the PC and Xbox 360 come fall, but as the company looked at the game -- a FPS set in a colorful war zone -- the powers that be saw an untapped resource and asked Lead Producer Kyle Peschel what he could do with another year to develop.

Seven bugs from being completely finished, Peschel scrapped just about everything.

"We've completely re-fabricated everything from the ground up," Peschel told a roomful of journalists last night at the W Hotel in San Francisco. "We've been working pretty hard for the last year."

Why do I have to kneel?

The basic premise of TimeShift remains the same -- there are a bunch of bad guys, and you have to stop them with the help of a device that can slow, stop and reverse the flow of time -- but that's about it. The game's once colorful graphics have been replaced with washed-out, dark and gritty textures; the unannounced story is completely new; character models have jumped from 2,500 polygons to 5 million polygons; and Sierra added S.A.M.

Short for Strategic Systems for Adaptable Metacognit, S.A.M. will be the suit players wear as they go up against the hordes of enemies and an active participant in the game.

When folks played the original build of TimeShift, Peschel found them relying solely on stopping time and ignoring the other buttons to slow and reverse the clock. It doesn't sound like much, but when players got to hurdles that required them to use the other options, they were stumped. Now, time control is handled by one button with S.A.M. choosing the Flux Capacitor method.

"S.A.M. will be making decisions with you -- not for you-- on how to best overcome any threat that you have in front of you," Peschel said.

This doesn't look good.

Peschel kept his comments and TimeShift footage brief, but promised to go into more detail today as Sierra's Spring Event continues and that the game will forgo the typical opening levels FPS fans are used to.